…And what, again, is this reactionary 85-year old doing STILL representing this progressive state in the Senate, and threatening to keep doing it for six more years?

I mean, too much time never goes by without her giving us yet another reason to vote for her opponent Kevin De León this fall.

We should have expected this back when she scandalized a San Francisco crowd by urging “patience” with President Trump and contending that he COULD turn out to be a “great President.”

Well, now look what Dianne has gone and done: Along with 17 other turncoat, security-state “Democrats,” she voted to give expanded warrantless FISA powers to President Trump, to spy on us and our fellow Americans with no evidence of wrongdoing (conveniently forgetting that these same Democrats regularly and rightly call the President a deranged authoritarian with no regard for liberty and no toleration for dissent.)

Well, the Orange Juice Blog reached out to Dianne’s 2018 opponent, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De León, and he provided us the following statement on the desmadre:

“As Washington, D.C. was consumed by a debate over the future of nearly a million Dreamers living in the United States, the U.S. Senate voted to reauthorize a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows for unchecked spying on American citizens by their government.

“Senator Feinstein and her colleagues had an opportunity to hold out, to fight for provisions that would have protected Americans from this gross invasion of their privacy, but voted instead to extend it.

“Her decision is disappointing, but it isn’t surprising. In 2009 she penned an op-ed in defense of unbridled government wiretapping, calling FISA’s warrantless spying provisions a ‘strong intelligence tool’.

“Given that our current President believes the Department of Justice and the FBI are his own personal law enforcement division, and regularly talks about locking up his political opponents, Congress’s actions threaten to plunge this country into an Orwellian nightmare.

“No President, especially not this President, should have the power to conduct warrantless searches to invade citizens’ privacy. It’s unreasonable, and it’s un-American.”

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist in Orange County, and official troubador of both Anaheim and Huntington Beach (the two ends of the Santa Ana Aquifer.) Performs regularly both solo, and with his savage-jazz quintet The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.

8 Comments

*Hey, we have Alexa……so we don’t worry about being listened to. They have been watching us for years…..now it is just a little bit easier. Hi Roswell, Area 25…….keep up the good work. Ever since Windows 95……we have all been under surveillance….you know it, we know it….everyone knows it.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does NOT equal ‘warrantless spying on Americans’ -please note allllll the evidence needed to get a FISA warrant even on self-described Kremlin advisor Carter Page.

Actually Steve, I think that here we are talking about a new, WORSE, FISA than Carter got the benefit of:

“The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to extend the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program for six years with minimal changes, rejecting a push by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to impose significant privacy limits when it sweeps up Americans’ e-mails and other personal communications.

“The vote, 256 to 154, centered on an expiring law that allows the government, without a warrant, to collect communications from US companies like Google and AT&T of foreigners abroad – even when those targets are talking to Americans. Congress had enacted the law in 2008 to legalize a form of once-secret warrantless surveillance program created after terrorist Sept 11 blah blah…”

I think one lesson here is that government invasions of privacy, like SO many bureaucratic phenomena, proceed inexorably under the principle of incrementalism once given the green light. Like the camel’s nose in the Arab dude’s tent…